EVALUATION OF GENOTOXICITY OF THREE FOOD PRESERVATIVES IN DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER USING SMART AND COMET ASSAYS

Abstract

The continuously growing food and beverage industry relies on food additives as a main component in their products. Such increased reliance on processed food, lead to neglectance of the harmful effects of the food additives on human health; among these are hypersensitivity, allergic reactions, genotoxicity, mutagenicity and more.  This study investigates genotoxic effects of three food preservatives commonly consumed in daily meals; sodium sulphite, boric acid, and benzoic acid using the somatic mutation and recombination test (SMART) and comet assay in Drosophila melanogaster system. All of the tested compounds showed significantly high levels of tumor induction and frequency compared to a negative control in SMART assay. They also showed high amount of DNA damage in the comet assay indicating their high potential of being genotoxic materials.